….and we’re back. I want to give a big shout out to Adam L. Silverman for taking the reins here and making sure the recipe threads continued while I took some much needed time off. And another big shout out to JeffreyW for keeping What’s 4 Dinner Solutions running with recipes, music and photos, so we didn’t fall of the map. If you haven’t seen it, he has been playing with new software and created some beautiful images of his spring trees, my favorite is here. Now from the blog, tonight’s recipe exchange:
As promised, I jumped back into blogging this week. And there was actual cooking and baking in my kitchen. I have been wanting to try a cold fermentation bread dough for a while and this was the week. I want to make it a couple more times before I share, but so far it is about the best bread I’ve ever made. For once high altitude did not diminish my enthusiasm or my bread.
But for the rest of the week, it was all about chicken.
First up, Golden Curried Chicken Pilaf and Dill Dip (pictured at top) – a complete dinner menu and recipes can be found here.
JeffreyW made Chicken in Tomatillo Sauce, click here, which I think sounds delicious. I love tomatillos. If you have room in your garden this year, they are very easy to grow. A great addition to salsas and sauces.
In anticipation of grilling weather, there is Tangy Yogurt Chicken, recipe here. The marinade makes for tender chicken and a terrific coating with some zing.
Spring is finally here, so why not a nice Chicken Primavera, with a bonus Carrot Cake, full dinner menu and recipes here.
What’s on your plate this weekend? Cooking anything fun this first full weekend of baseball? Hit the comments and share.
Tonight’s featured recipe is from my kids’ menu. Great flavor and a breeze to put together. I tossed in some grated Parmesan for additional flavor when I made it this week.
Sesame Chicken Tenders
- 1/2 cup stone-ground mustard
- 1/2 cup honey
- 3 tbsp limejuice
=======
- salt & pepper
- ½ cup sesame seeds
- ½ cup Italian breadcrumbs
- 1 egg, beaten
- 1 to 2 tbsp water
- 1 to 1 ½ lbs chicken tenders
baking sheet, greased or lined with parchment or foil
2 bowls and 1 plate
Mix mustard, honey & limejuice in bowl, set aside for dipping sauce*.
On plate mix salt, pepper, breadcrumbs & sesame seeds. In second bowl, add egg and water. Dip chicken in egg wash then dredge in breadcrumbs, coating completely. Place on baking sheet, sprinkle with more sesame seeds if desired. Bake at 425° for 10 minutes, turn, and bake an additional 5 to 10 minutes, until crispy on all sides. Serve with mustard dipping sauce, waffle fries and a fresh vegetable tray for a quick and easy dinner.
*Note: I made a second dipping sauce using Buttermilk Dressing and my favorite Red Hot Sauce. I liked it and will use it again.
That’s it for this week. Next week I’ll be mixing it up with some recipes I’ve had bookmarked to try for a while. Have a great weekend! – TaMara
rikyrah
I am just finishing up some fried chicken -wings and breasts.
But, I have some leftover breasts-thanks for the recipe.
Uncle Ebeneezer
My Wok finally arrived today!!!
We went to Vietnam/Cambodia in February so naturally I’ve been obsessed with trying to recreate some of the amazing food we had over there, ever since we got back. Having an actual wok will help greatly.
This weekend I’m going to try this recipe. I messaged the hotel that we stayed at in Cambodia and they were kind enough to share the recipe with me. It was amazing when they made it, so hopefully I can do it justice. It’s kind of a cheap, comfort food dish that should be perfect for a rainy, cold weekend.
Fried Noodle Chili Pork
Ingredients
2 garlic cloves
1 cup of minced pork
1 tomato, diced
1 medium red chili, deseeded and diced
Half onion, diced
1 teaspoons of Palm sugar (or normal sugar)
1 teaspoon of soy sauce
1 table spoon of tomato sauce (ketchup)
Half a cup of warm water
Dried noodle of choice
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
Salt and pepper
Preparation In a small pot, boil some water and cooked the noodle, drain the water and put it aside. On medium heat, put in 2 tablespoons of vegetable oil and sweat the garlic. Add minced pork and cooked until golden brown, add diced tomato, onion and diced red chili, cook for a few minutes. In a small bowl, mix half a cup of warm water with palm sugar and soy sauce, salt and pepper. Pour it over the pork mixture, cook for 3 minutes, add cooked noodle and tomato sauce, mix well. Sprinkle with chopped spring onion or coriander and fresh chilli.
Elizabelle
I want. Recipes look extra delish this week.
Eating hummus with veggies, cuz have veggies from a deck party last week to finish up.
I like Aldi. It’s like a treasure hunt.
Elizabelle
@Uncle Ebeneezer: That looks wonderful.
You gonna get a cold weekend? Sounds like we’re seeing rain mixed with snow tomorrow a.m., after it was like 65 or 70 today. Bipolar weather.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: I got some fig preserves at Aldi’s, delicious.
TaMara (HFG)
@Uncle Ebeneezer: This sounds great. I love it when a restaurant is happy to share a favorite dish.
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: Yum. They had a “limited supply” of butterkase (butter cheese) there today, and now I think I have to go back and grab some.
Must watch some of the movies you’ve recommended! Was amused to see Sesame Street doing Life of (Whoopie) Pi[e] yesterday. Might seem like a non sequitur, but not really …. an homage. With Cookie Monster in the role of the tiger.
Germy Shoemangler
Guyanese Roti, Advice & Politics
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1JSXVnq_Ns
Mnemosyne
Blobs of ricotta cheese on pizza sound better than they taste, at least at this place.
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
I have come to love Vietnamese food. It’s probably my favorite of all the Asian cuisines. It tastes so much lighter and fresher than Thai or Chinese food.
raven
Well, here’s a picture I took of MacIlroy eating on Monday. He and Spieth are paired together tomorrow and that will be way better than any baseball.
raven
@Mnemosyne: Choi Oi!
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Elizabelle: Yes, but by “cold” I mean by Los Angeles standards, so 60’s.
This recipe was the first meal we had when we arrived, exhausted in Cambodia and it was delicious. I had no idea how good their food was. Lots of stir fry with rice/noodles, pork chops and fish and they have this amazing Kampot black pepper that is much more complex than most of the black pepper I’ve had here in the states. Here’s a great site with a bunch of recipes.
Tonight I’m keeping things easy with grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon jam (suggested by the Trader Joe’s clerk) and tomato soup.
Mnemosyne
@raven:
I don’t know the name of anything but the bahn mi, which just happens to be the world’s most perfect sandwich. I had one last night at 9021Pho.
raven
@Mnemosyne: Choi Oye is an exclamation.
Choi oi
The words in Vietnamese are: trời ơi
Choi oi, is how it sounds to my Australian ear.
It’s an exclamation meaning Oh Dear, WTF, OMG, Oh Fụck, Fer Fụck’s Sake, Oh Shït, Oy Vey, etc..
It’s a versatile little exclamation.
From Wiki: The first sense is an exclamation of surprise.
The second use is always an expression of frustration, or some form of anger thereof.
Schlemazel (parmesan rancor)
@Uncle Ebeneezer:
Good luck, the recipe sounds delicious! I don’t know what your stove is like but really high heat is a big part of wok success. We bought one with a 23k BTU burner specifically to get more heat & it still is not as much as I want. Its not bad just not quite the same as restaurant level meals.
Steeplejack (phone)
@Mnemosyne:
I love Vietnamese, and I am lucky to live very close to Eden Center, which has 40+ Vietnamese restaurants, cafés and delis. I’ve been working my way through them and haven’t hit a bad one yet.
Mike E
Reposted from the last thread…twice cooked crispy taters:
Heat a cooking sheet in a 450°F oven. Cut 2½ lbs of gold potatoes in ½ inch slices; put in dutch pot and cover with salted water with an inch to spare, bring to boil then simmer for 5 mins, drain and place in a large bowl; add 2 Tbl of olive oil and ½ tsp of salt, toss with a silicone spatula; add 2 more Tbl of oil and ½ tsp salt, toss until starchy; take sheet out and drizzle on 1 Tbl of olive oil, place slices on in a single layer (cut side down for ends) and roast for 15-18 mins, rotating halfway; take sheet out and flip slices, then roast another 10-12 mins. Salt and pepper to taste before serving.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Mnemosyne: You and me both. Before our trip Vietnamese was probably 3rd or 4th on my list behind Korean, Japanese and maybe Thai or Chinese. I liked Vietnamese but wasn’t as crazy about it probably because I had only really had Pho and Banh Mi. But spending 7 days over there and trying a bunch of other stuff (Com Ga- chicken and rice, Com Tom- pork over broken rice, Cao Lau- pork noodle dish only found in Hoi An) I really fell in love. And now it’s probably my favorite. Like you said, it’s so much lighter than Korean/Chinese/Thai and even some Japanese (ramen, udon, curry.) I miss having an amazing bowl of Pho and a Vietnamese iced coffee every morning. And the pastries!!….Every meal we had there was superb (and usually dirt cheap.)
I’ve spent the past month or so obsessing over trying to find a Banh Mi recipe that comes close to the ones we had in Hoi An. Before the trip I liked Banh Mi, but it wasn’t until I had it over there that I really started to appreciate it’s awesomeness. It was quite different than the versions we have here (at least that I have had in LA.) In VT our Banh Mi always had: 1.) red chiles rather than jalapenos, 2.) pate, always, 3.) a small amount of cilantro but not enough to dominate the flavor like they usually do here and 4.) a semi-spicy brownish sauce that was incredibly delicious. Most of the Banh Mi in LA has no sauce that I’ve noticed. The only moisture comes from the pickled carrots/daikon but there’s no actual sauce. Anyways, I found that this recipe gets pretty damn close to the Banh Mi we had in Vietnam. The marinade for the pork loin uses fish sauce and 5-spice and gives the pork an amazing taste. The special sauce is mayo, hoisin and sriracha. And if you can use red chiles instead of jalapenos, imo, that gets it much of the way there.
Yutsano
@Uncle Ebeneezer: I got very lucky in that I got raised around a Vietnamese family. My mom has a recipe for egg rolls from them called chai sal, which I SWEAR have crack in them because you can’t stop eating them! Every now and again we’ll make them as a family but we haven’t done that in awhile. Maybe some weekend I can talk mom into that.
NotMax
@Uncle Ebeneezer
I have nothing whatsoever against Vietnamese food and wouldn’t turn down an invitation to dine on some.
Yet have always found it ultimately unsatisfying. After eating at a Vietnamese restaurant, crave nothing so much as to stop somewhere for a sandwich on the way home.
seaboogie
I am making my new favorite “winter-ish” dish (it’s fixing to rain here in NorCal), which is farrow with mushrooms and thyme, cooked like risotto, more or less. I saute a good amount of shiitake mushrooms in fresh local EVOO and fresh thyme. Set the shrooms aside and saute the the shallot in more olive oil for just a bit before adding a couple of handsful of farro to saute with the shallot. Then a few additions of chicken broth, follwed by water as needed (it can actually get too chicken-y). Add the mushrooms to warm up at the end, and then stir in some grated percorino romano and freshly ground pepper (I use mixed peppercorns). So nutty and chewy and woodsy and deeply yummy!
Yutsano
Wow…paging Betty Cracker!
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Mnemosyne: Anthony Bourdain irritates the hell out of me alot of the time, but man, the Banh Mi place he made ultra famous (Banh Mi Phuong in Hoi An) really did live up to the hype. Might be the best sandwich I’ve ever had. My wife and I still reminisce about that sandwich way more than 2 adults probably should.
a hip hop artist from Idaho (fka Bella Q)
Thank you for all these (each of you); I’ve copied the link to my recipe file as there is currently a surfeit of both chicken and curry chez Q. Lots of rice too, now that I think of it. Including 5.5 mason jars filled with Lundberg wild blend which was on sale in bulk last week. Mr. Q filled a bag, LOL.
@raven: If you’re still up with no hoops to keep you, I want to see the McIlroy cup picture again (please).
And Jeezuz g*d those tree pictures of jeffrey w are amazing.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Ebeneezer: Cant really look things up now, but try to find Hue-style banh mi. Completely different sandwich, and completely excellent. But only Hue and north – had mine in Hanoi.
Steeplejack
@Uncle Ebeneezer, @Gin & Tonic:
My gateway to Vietnamese food was Cha Giò, a little place in midtown Atlanta, circa 1980. Excellent banh mi and of course the eponymous rolls. Dunno if it’s still open, but it was a mainstay for a long time.
Uncle Ebeneezer
@Gin & Tonic: Will do. I’m curious about the differences.
PS- Your namesake G&T’s in Vietnam were also fantastic on a 98 degree/70%humidity day.
mental.masala
I’m generally not a big fan of chicken, but these two are great:
Classic Chicken Adobo: http://blogs.kcrw.com/goodfood/2013/05/recipe-classic-chicken-adobo/
So easy! Chicken goes in a skillet with vinegar, soy sauce, bay leaves, peppercorns. Cook covered then uncovered.
Chicken Legs With Preserved Lemons & Green Olives: http://www.sfgate.com/food/recipes/detail/?p=detail&rid=19757&sorig=qs
This one takes more work, but still manageable. It’s a North African treatment with coriander seeds, lots of onion, ground dry ginger, preserved lemons and green olives. So good.
raven
@Steeplejack: The place on 10th St right? It’s been closed for quite some time.
Cleos
“First up, Golden Curried Chicken Pilaf and Dill Dip”
If you grow just one herb, grow dill. It’s ridiculously easy. And if you buy store-bought salads, a little chopped dill is a good way to make them special.